Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday November 20, 2009 @08:52PM
from the hey-some-people-can't-afford-that-99-cents dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Many game developers don't think of the iPhone as being a system which has extensive game piracy. But recent comments by developers and analysts have shown otherwise, and Gamasutra speaks to multiple parties to evaluate the size of the problem and whether there's anything that can be done about it. Quoting: 'Greg Yardley confirms that getting ripped off by pirates is the rule rather than the exception. Yardley is co-founder and CEO of Manhattan-based Pinch Media, a company that provides analytic software for iPhone games. ... "What we've determined is that over 60% of iPhone applications have definitively been pirated based on our checks," he reveals, "and the number is probably higher than that." While it's impossible to estimate how much money developers are losing, it involves more than the price of the game, he says. "What developers lose is not necessarily the sale," he explains, "because I don't believe pirates would have bought the game if they hadn't stolen it. But when there is a back-end infrastructure associated with a game, that is an ongoing incremental cost that becomes a straight loss for the developer."'"

What's up the past few days. Stories about iPhone development sucks, Android development rules, no wait Android development sucks and iPhone development rules, no wait iPhone owners are a bunch of pirates.

What's up the past few days. Stories about iPhone development sucks, Android development rules, no wait Android development sucks and iPhone development rules, no wait iPhone owners are a bunch of pirates.

What you are seeing is a battle over memespace, two sides trying to convince a technical populace that the other side sucks.

Happily slashdot readers are more savvy than this, and there are well reasoned responses in each of these articles that lay out what is going on, despite very misleading article summaries - like this story implying 60% of iPhone users pirate, when in reality it's about 5% and the 60% figure is only the percentage of apps that have pirated VERSIONS, which says nothing about number of users who are pirating any given app.

Not all piracy is because people are assholes. See, iTunes is not available in my country (Argentina) without an international credit card. They won't even take my paypal account unless it has a valid US address. Most of the time they won't even allow me to subscribe to free podcasts (!!!).

So I went to a Mac Store and asked them if they sold Gift cards, nope...

Then I contacted the company who makes the app I wanted (I was willing to pay the $2 they asked, using paypal) but nope... They only do business through Apple.

Ok, screw them. I just downloaded the app, uploaded it to my iPhone and run it.

Something similar happens with the Wiistore. And don't get me started about PC games, that cost several times their US cost.

My company also tracks iphone piracy rates. And while the piracy rate is in line with the OP there's more to it than that. Apps with demos generally have lower piracy rates. Also we track usage rate, pirates tend to only launch once or twice, as if they're sampling the app. So it's not as bad as the article makes it sound.

TFAs were scant on details. How is it that they can identify which instances of apps were pirated and yet still be unable to put in a decent kill switch* ? Are iPhone games that easy to crack? Do iPhone games use a ubiquitous piracy control scheme where you crack one, you crack all? Are there that many bored or unemployed crackers who would go through the trouble to crack a $2 game?

*Not that I condone that sort of thing, but people are used to that kind of control on mobile platforms anyway.

Its easy enough. I spent a good 2 weeks trying to figure out how to create my own personal "registration" system. The old type where your given a license key and it says "Yea you bought it" Most of the time I have a root seed value thats hashed with some random data. Sure, a cracker can make a key gen once they figure out the hash method and seed value (not that hard), but it was resonantly simple to set up. Using public key cryptography you could make sure that a key gen is not possible, but at that

"Yardley is co-founder and CEO of Manhattan-based Pinch Media, a company that provides analytic software for iPhone games...."

I'm sure reporting greater pirating numbers is in Mr. Yardley's financial interest as well. Not to say there isn't pirating going on but when the entity reporting the pirating number derives a living from said numbers I tend to be a bit skeptical. It is like the RIAA's number's, there has to be some basis for truth in them, but you can rest assured they are massaged and slanted to show the greatest impact to the paying customer...

Actually they would be far more valuable kept private. There's no reason at all not to believe these numbers, as Pinch Media gains nothing by the numbers being higher or lower - any developer can easily add code in themselves to check if an app is pirated, so it's not like people not using Pinch Media today would be overly compelled to do so if they really wanted to check.

There's a lot more to any analytics than "is this game being pirated".It's like complaining about google trends because google is a for profit corporationor about web analytic companies because they're also for profit.

Whenever a developer claims to be "losing money" to piracy, one has to wonder... are the developers losing this money trying to combat piracy directly (lawsuits and DRM tactics), or is it simply a case of self-flattery, where the developer is grossly over-estimating the value of their software, thinking "If my software isn't great, then why would anyone pirate it?"

Perhaps its time for some self-reflection. You are just another pawn in an industry wide problem spanning over 30 years. Chances are, you and your app aren't special. The piracy was likely nothing more than a bulk job handled indescriminately with no concern for you or anyone else.

In this case, they're losing money because they have to pay for bandwidth and server resources that unpaid app users are utilizing.

What the developers should do is utilize in-app purchase capability, that produces a unique transaction id# kept on their servers for each purchase, username/password, that the developer gets associated with the unique device ID.

Cut the initial cost of the app, and charge a consumable fee.

A fee for "X hours" of app usage, which gets tracked by the server, e.g. 1000

A fee for "X hours" of app usage, which gets tracked by the server, e.g. 1000 hours of app usage.

How can the server track an iPhone or iPod Touch device using the app in airplane mode? If your app refuses to run in airplane mode, and its normal operation wouldn't reasonably need a constant connection to the Internet, you risk drawing undesirable comparisons to Valve's Steam authentication.

Ok, this actually makes sense to me. Even if the app can identify itself as legitimate or pirated in a server/client setting, even the bandwidth used for verification of each copy of the app alone would eventually add up.

the developer is grossly over-estimating the value of their software, thinking "If my software isn't great, then why would anyone pirate it?"

I once worked for a small company with a semi-popular application. Sales were almost all of the form of pay pal purchases off the website. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough to pay one developer. But piracy was a huge problem. It was quite obvious that more than 90% of the copies running were pirated.

The company changed directions and started bundling the application for free with online services. The service provider would pay for the application and the customers would get the software for use only with the service. But the company was worried about piracy, so they asked me to write DRM that tied the application to the service. They would continue to sell an untied version off the website, but with "call home" DRM (it's an internet app, so it's not quite as draconian as it sounds). I very reluctantly agreed (i.e., I had to decide whether it was worth quitting over -- if I had to do it again, I'd quit).

The end result was that all piracy stopped. In fact, all usage stopped. Instead of selling 2 or 3 copies a day off the website, not one copy of the DRM version was ever sold. And due to very poor choices of service provider partners, the company received no revenue at all. Within a year the company had folded.

The thing is, the new version was head and shoulders better than then non-DRMed version. And the DRM was truly unobtrusive (think DRM in WoW). Paying customers wouldn't even know it existed. But sales are generated by popularity, not quality. Piracy, like it or not generates popularity. The company was very small and had no means of effective advertising. By cutting off the pirates, they shut off their only revenue source.

What always kills me about this story is this: The app we were making was *perfect* for an open software model. Ask the service providers to each spend a small amount of money to cover development and give them the app for free. Give them branding in the app to thank them for their help. But the "sales" people were always quick to point out that the service providers they found had no money and couldn't afford to pay us up front. How on earth did we fail?:-P

You're app really isn't that good. Piracy really isn't as big as you'd like to think it is.

I too am a developer.

I've worked on one particular app now for 7 years, there are probably 50-60k legitimate sales of the app over its lifespan. Not a huge number by any means, but if there have been 1k pirated copies installed over its entire life I would be shocked. Our app doesnt' call home, but if you use it, you're going to connect to one of a handful of sites at some point that we ca

I have a jailbroken phone and it was ridiculously easy to do so. So does my girlfriend and technically speaking, she's amish. In short, jailbreaking a phone is stupendously simple, so much that I wonder why even Apple's numbers claim that the figure is something like 10% of all iphones are jailbroken.

That being said, it would appear that pirating apps from the app store, while not hard, would take at least a little more technical know how than the average iphone user has or is willing to put up with.

I jailbroke, played with it for a while, then reinstalled and went back to my comfort zone. I find it hard to believe that the majority of my fellow iPhone users didn't do the same. We like it Apple, and we like it simple. We don't pirate, and we all have fresh breath. Right?

So jailbreaking an iphone, which takes almost no technical know how is done by 10% of users and pirating apps, which takes more know how, results in 60% of games being pirated?

The thing is it's very, very easy to automate this pirating. That is to say, the supply of pirated apps is what the 60% figure comes from - 60% of apps they track have pirated versions run at one time or another.

It's not saying 60% of users are running pirated apps, or that any one app has 60% of users running a pirated version.

The point is to get people angry and accomplish positive change. I have a problem with you criticizing a very valid tactic used daily by working journalists. Who the hell are you to judge? You can't do that by dryly reporting a mind-numbingly boring story in didactic terms. You do that by "taking an angle" on the story, and making it relevant to people's lives.

I jailbroke my iPhone before the App Store started up. Then I un-jailbroke it. I just didn't see the need, even though it is really easy.

But I cannot figure out how to pirate anything off the App Store and I didn't know it was possible. I also don't know how anyone could subvert iTunes to steal applications for one's (or one's friends') iPhone or iPod Touch.

Now I'm not looking for anyone to list the steps to steal stuff on slashdot, but people can pirate apps from the App Store?! I thought Apple had it pret

but people can pirate apps from the App Store?! I thought Apple had it pretty much locked up.

Pirating apps from the app store works pretty much the same as pirating games or music: you buy a legal copy from the store, remove DRM if necessary (not on the iPhone), then distribute it through pirate sites. If your iPhone is jailbroken, you can rip software from it and install pirated stuff on it.

Personally, the only reason for me to jailbreak my iPhone would be to get access to apps that do not exist in

The way the numbers are reported is a bit misleading. “Of paid apps that use Pinch Media’s services, 60% have been pirated. Of those pirated apps, 34% of all installs are the pirated version.” This means that maybe only 20% of installs are pirated. Those numbers are actually really good for software.

The way the first picture is reported is also misleading. It’s titled, “Application Piracy is Global” and then it shows a graph of jailbroken iphones. Jailbreaking is not the same as pirating. Jailbreaking is what you need to unbind an iphone from the app store, and the first step to unlocking an iphone. Since iPhones are were not sold in China until just recently, almost all their iPhones have to be imported from other carriers, so it is no surprise that an abnormally high percentage in China are jailbroken.

Judging from the graph, it appears that roughly 10-15% of all iphones have been jailbroken. “About 38% [of jailbroken iphones] have used a pirated application.” “34% of all installs are cracked” This means that roughly 4-6% of iphone users have ever used a pirated application. And yet somehow, those 4-6% of iphones account for 34% of all installs? I’m a bit skeptical.

“Pirated apps on jailbroken iPhones crash more, which may be why they’re used less.” I’m really skeptical about this interpretation. That graph is really really zoomed in. Crash rates for pirated applications appear to crash only 0.5%-1.3% more sessions than a regular app. That’s fairly rare. That’s like one in every 80 to 200 sessions results in an “extra” crash.

This blog post is either really poorly written or the author has an intentional bias that they want to express.

On a related note, I hope this gets more app developers to make “lite” versions of their software so people can try them out. The conversion numbers are much better than the alternative.

- In order to pirate an iphone app, you have to jailbreak your phone. Only a small percentage of the user base have done this

- By measuring the total number of "phone homes", you can figure out how many copies of your app are out in the wild, INCLUDING copies on jailbroken phones.

So if you find out that your app has 1000 copies in the wild.

600 of those copies are on the jailbroken iphones that make up maybe 5% of the total phones.

Therefore, you're out the revenue from those 600 copies? Nope, because if those users hadn't hacked their phones, they probably WOULD NOT have paid for your app. The reason you only have 400 sales in this scenario is that the 95% of users who are eligible to buy it weren't interested enough in your app. The jailbreaking users just grab whatever they want whenever they want, but wouldn't behave like that if they had to pay.

I'm not sure who you're talking to when you say "Here's the flaws in their reasoning" (the summary concedes that 1 pirate != 1 lost sale).

A simpler way of making your argument is simply to say that:
If 5% of iPhones are jailbroke AND
Jailbreaking is necessary for piracy AND
If pirates would've bought apps at the same rate as the general public
Then: no matter how many pirated copies are being used, eliminating piracy would increase sales by 5%.

This sounds like a shocking figure, but don't forget, it doesn't mean that over 60% have managed to jailbreak their phones and have manually added the pirate repository and bypassed the morality message. That would be silly.

People who are heavily into pirating tend to download everything they can get their hands on. Doesn't matter that they won't touch 99% of of it and will just store gigabytes of it on their hard drives and DVD-Rs - that's the point. It's like a gam

I have a lot of friends and co-workers with iPhones and I don't think a single one of them has a jailbroken device OR any pirated apps. Considering a fair amount of them (and myself) have the technical ability to do so, I wonder about the "rule", regardless of whether they're Pinch-based apps or not.

And honestly, most of the apps are so cheap that anyone and everyone should just pay the $2. I bought RedLaser for $1.99 a while back and saved far mo

Pirates...whether they're stealing apps or cargo ships...are the lowest form of life.

thank you.

more of us (the slashdotters) need to speak out and communicate to our friends and families to stop stealing shit.

the way to reduce piracy is not through legal [wikipedia.org] or technical [wikipedia.org] means (which have both failed miserably) but through social change. It's unfortunate that the biggest thieves around are the ones running the country, but that can be a pillar on which to build the argument: "Do you want to be like the corrupt fucks on wall st?? taking shit that isn't yours?? fucking over constructive working

My 3 year old son urges me to download games on the iPhone. I get all the free ones listed for each category and listed under "most popular." He and I agree that 99% of the games we see are some of the worst crap you can imagine. There are a few types:

* Stuff that requires a lot of downloading, rendering, entering passwords, connecting to various multiplayer networks, answering their questions, etc. It takes 5 minutes before the game starts, but by then, we've both lost patience.

My 5 year old must be way less sophisticated than your 3 year old. He can't/won't stop playing Animatch (concentration, with wonderful cartoon animals that make amazing sounds) and I get lost playing Backgammon NJ.

Both apps are super, but beyond that I don't find the idea of most games on a tiny screen worthwhile, free or otherwise.

Look, I and almost ALL of my friends have iPhones. We're all geeks and I think almost all of us have jailbroken our phones at least once and I for one have kept up and stayed jailbroken since the very beginning. We're not the sort who wouldn't pirate an app or two, if nothing just to try it out, but so far as I know NONE of us have. Apparently it's not very hard, I've heard there are torrents out there full of them, but come on - for.99 why bother? Hell I even bought the Navigon mapping app for full price and THAT stung! But pirating never crossed my mind and I know that the two other friends of mine that have it have paid for it too. If the rate of pirating were really as high as 60% then I'm pretty sure my friends would be chattering about it quite a bit or at least asking me about it. I will admit that with all of this talk about it I'm tempted to go learn more about how to do it and maybe try an app or two but most games these days have a trial version and that has satisfied me. This isn't like PC games that often turn out to be crap and if you watch the store you can often find apps on sale - wish there was an app to tell me about THAT! It's like MP3s, I used to pirate the heck out of them and had ripped ALL of my friends CDs and vice versa. I refused to buy anything DRM'd! Now I use Shazam to pickup on any songs I like and then about once every couple of weeks I sit down and download all the ones I like from Amazon at a buck apiece. At THAT price with no DRM it's simply not worth my while to ask around to find out who has the song and it feels good to not download it from some cheezy torrent. I might even buy a used CD once in awhile too but sorry no new ones RIAA.

So, I'm sort of the demographic that would consider this and frankly I've just not been tempted and I don't think any of the ten+ iPhone owners I know have been either. I think these guys may be pushing an agenda here, maybe next week they will release an app designed to halt this. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if that's what this was about....

...that people are willing to pay a minimum of $60/month for iPhone service and $100 on the hardware itself (and on average quite a lot more than this!), yet are pirating games and apps worth, what, $2?

*facepalm*

I don't get it. Pirating movies and music, at least, I get. An album or movie is usually at least $10. And the replay value is not as high as a game--you saw it or listened to it, okay, that's everything to the content. A game, IMO, has more lasting entertainment value (provided it's a good one)

Consider that only people in the US are spending $1440 on their iPhones. In the UK I could pick up an unlocked iPhone for around $900 and that's going for a brand new legitimate purchase from a reputable retailer.

Now throw in the cheaper markets than the UK, include the second hand market, include the black and grey markets and throw in the iPod thing.

Then see the other response I've made in this article which highlights that focussing on the $2 cost of the apps is a specious argument.

Almost every commercial Android application gets immediately cracked. Anyone can freely download them from links posted on public forums you can find with a simple Google search. And as far as I understand, there's even no need to jailbreak the device in order to install Android cracked software.

This is really bad for developers and I really hope that eventually, Apple and Google will find a solution to prevent this.

I wonder if maybe he is being clever with his phrasing, and instead of 60% of all app installations being cases of piracy, the fact he is trying to state is that of the apps in the app store (more probably, the apps that they instrument), 60% of them have been pirated at least once.

No, he's stating that (at least for games) 60% or more of your users are pirating the app. He's also right.

He's not actually "Just over 60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated. This estimate is also low, since application pirates occasionally disable our tracking. When an application is pirated, an average of 34% of all installs are cracked — in other words, about half of legitimate paid downloads."

Actually reading the article, I was right, quoting from approximately the fifth paragraph:

Just over 60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated. This estimate is also low, since application pirates occasionally disable our tracking. When an application is pirated, an average of 34% of all installs are cracked -- in other words, about half of legitimate paid downloads.

He says that for apps that have seen piracy, an average of 34% of the installs are pirated.

So the 60% was just their way of stating the biggest possible percentage.

Actually, I think that comes to about one third of the 60%, meaning that 20% of all the installs of apps that use Pinch are pirated. I assume that Pinch charges for its library, so they would likely be tracking few, if any, free apps. They may be in some low-priced apps, but probably not that many of those, either. So that 20% may well amount to something like 1% or fewer of all installs. On my phone, free or 99-cent apps comprise roughly 95% of the installed base; I know of only one that uses Pinch (ou

Yes, quite true. Those numbers are pretty much divorced from reality. I'd guess an inverse relation between price and installed base, most likely, but that doesn't really give much to reason with. Too many uncertainties.

Or it just so happens that 40% of the applications are more or less crap.

That seems like an extremely low estimate, I would have thought at least 90% of applications are crap. Anyway, how would a "pirate" know without pirating it first? In the PC world, everything gets pirated, whether crap or not.

No kidding. If an app "should be free" because it clearly took so little effort to develop, then I encourage would-be-pirates people to simply write it themselves. If they don't have the ability to write it but want to use it, then it is worth something to them.

The same could be said about music, but that doesn't go over so well:)

With software, United States case law recognizes methods of "reverse engineering", or copying only the (uncopyrightable) functionality of a program without copying the (copyrighted) expression of the program. Music and other non-software works don't have a corresponding exception; even if you "write it yourself", you might still infringe. George Harrison found out about this the hard way when he wrote a song only to learn later that he would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to someone else who had written the same song years earlier (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music).

The reason is, of course, that Slashdotters, as a general rule, understand what goes into programming an application. We have empathy and respect for programmers for the simple reason that for some of us, it's our profession.

Not so much with musicians. We (again -- as a general rule) characterize them as untalented and spoiled. Some people are more equal than others, and in the eyes of many Slashdotters, musicians are the least equal of all.

We don't pirate applications because we respect the work that programmers perform. However, we elevate music piracy to a social cause worthy of Rosa Parks. Hurting musicians? No -- we're putting them in their place. They should get a day job! They should make a living selling t-shirts! They should just stop being so greedy! We deserve to use modern technology to copy their work, but how dare they try to use modern technology to make a living?

And if that's not enough of a rationalization of music piracy, we're eager to suggest others. Just watch.

I think you're confusing "recording "artists"" with musicians. To be a real musician takes a good bit of talent and a whole lot of practice, and I think you'll find that there are more slashdotters and other technical people who are also musicians as well and who will find some sympathy for musicians who actually deserve the title.Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, B.B. King, Jimmie Page -- just to name a few popular people who deserve to actually be called musicians -- are markedly different than the slutt

Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, B.B. King, Jimmie Page -- just to name a few popular people who deserve to actually be called musicians -- are markedly different than the slutty little panty flashers and boys in girls pants that get pimped by the recording studios

So there are no songwriters, instrumentalists, or producers involved in any of Britney Spears's records? They just somehow appear from the ether through the evil powers of the record companies?

Not so much with musicians. We (again -- as a general rule) characterize them as untalented and spoiled.

That part is true.

I play the Guitar and most people who actually care about music do not manage to make it anywhere as the industry is set up to support generic factory produced music, not anything that is actually created. Instead of going to the latest Shitney Spears concert, try finding a local bar that has a live Jazz or Rock band playing and you will quickly notice the difference, granted these

It's unfortunate that the truly talented musicians are giving lessons and performing at parties for less then A$500 a night.

The problem there isn't that those musicians are underpaid. $500 a night for 5 hours of work and maybe 20 hours of practice, a week, is entirely reasonable. Plenty of us make half that for an actual 40 hour week.

I'm not trying to compare the hours worked, musicians usually can't work 'more' and hence a couple of hours a week of performance does need to pay for their living expensiv

The problem there isn't that those musicians are underpaid. $500 a night for 5 hours of work and maybe 20 hours of practice

A$20 an hour may seem reasonable. That's A$20 an hour or judging by a 40 hour week and 48 week year (standard here in AU) thats A$38,000 which is not a good wage but not a bad wage for a 20 to 25 year old.

The problem is that you need 1.6 acts per week to get that and that it takes more then 20 hours of practice to be performance ready. You're also not counting equipment which is pe

Yes. People hear the kids practicing in the garage next door and think "music is easy." No, it isn't. If it were, everyone would make it. It's extremely time-consuming, laborious, and expensive. It is no different from software.

"Overpriced to begin with? Rubbish. They cost loads less than on any competing platform"

That's not the issue, games themselves are now WAY WAY over produced so their value to people is nil. Most iPhone games are rehashes of old games and are absolute junk, I'm not surprised no one wants to pay money for a phone game. Most people have systems dedicated to gaming for just this purpose.

iPhone games = flash games, this is why many flash games are run on portals for the ad revenue. IMHO that's the model iPhon

A product is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. This is how "supply and demand" works. If the consumers are telling you it's overpriced rather than buying it, then it is overpriced. If you paid too much in developing software that's deemed overpriced by your customer base, you can hardly blame the consumer for that. You simply over-invested in a failed project.

Doesn't that essentially indicate the apps are overpriced to begin with? (not that this is a legitimate excuse for pirating them).

The Pinchmedia report [pinchmedia.com] is a must read. It shows there is a definite link between wealth and piracy ( GDP is negatively correlated with piracy) and pirates use apps intensely for a couple of weeks then mostly abandon them which may indicate that they either lost intrest and wouldn't have bought anyway or bought it after a "trial" piracy period.

Yes, that is the case. So that means 2-3 million devices that can potentially pirate apps (of course not all people that jailbreak do so to pirate apps), out of a field of 30 million+ devices.

If so, does that mean the "rule" is that there are more jailbroken phone users out there using these pirated applications than there are non-jailbroken phone users using them?

Not at all. This statistic is really misleading, because they are just saying that 60% total of the apps HAVE PIRATED VERSIONS. Actually I would be really surprised if it was that low, I thought it was closer to 90% since it's easily automated - but someone has to buy the app in the first place to pirate it....

But that number says nothing at all about the number of users of any application. That number is NOT saying that 60% of the users of any given app have pirated it.

However there's even more to it that that. As I said the pirating is really easily automated, so it's not like the traditional pirating where applications are really cracked - code signing is just removed. This is actually really easy for an application developer to check for and so lots of apps now check to see (a) if they are on a jailbroken device or (b) if the app is pirated or not. Lots of developers monitor that but do nothing about it, some issue gentle notices after a few weeks saying "hey, why not buy me now". So any developer that cares about the pirating can make the job a lot harder if they really want by preventing functionality on pirated copies.

I think it's more jailbroken ipod touches than phones. My nephews indicate that jailbroken (correct word?) ipod touches are very common among the grade school set, and their ipods were chock full of games they downloaded for free...

I literally had never pirated an app from my Jailbroken since day one 2G iphone until a Slashdot story a few weeks ago told me how easy it was courtesy of appulo.us et al.

After going on an utter bonanza of "Yarrr prepare to be boarded - your booty be mine for the plunderin!" the only pirated app (out of.... 43 that I downloaded, just checked) is Wolfram Alpha ($50 for a web front end?!) and NBA Season Pass which now doesnt work since I moved back to China

If an app is "over-priced" at a $1, then I think the App Store has done you a disservice in terms of the REAL value of hard work.
If you think it's too expensive, and yet you still want it, I think it stands to reason that while you may not want to pay as much as they are asking for, it certainly shouldn't be free. And anyone who complains about $1 apps needs to re-evaluate their budget. If you feel even a $1 app is too much, DON'T BUY IT. But that doesn't entitle you to "trial periods", where you will hav

If you've never written a line of code in your life, you have absolutely NO idea how much hard work goes into an app you might think is "simple" or "not worth a dollar".

Effort does not correlate with value. I can spend thirty years building something and still end up with something worthless, and I can spend half an hour building a million dollar app. It's all about ho

If you think it's too expensive, and yet you still want it, I think it stands to reason that while you may not want to pay as much as they ar

I totally agree. I won't lose any sleep over a $2 purchase. But at some point beyond that, there are a great number of apps which really should offer a trial period or lite version so you know what in the world you're buying before you purchase it. Too often all you get are some screenshots and a vague description, and I don't want to have to spend an hour Googling it.

That's not a defense of stealing it! Just a suggestion that the existing process -- which works pretty well -- has room for improvement.

Don't conflate the issue of whether the price is fair with the issue of whether a free trial is necessary.

I will agree with you that $1 is a ridiculously low price for a software application, and someone unwilling to pay that much should just not use the app.

The problem is that when producers get paid in full every time a consumer evaluates the product and decides it is unusable, they start creating products that look just good enough to try out, but don't actually work. The revenues are the same, and the

Whether you can afford $1 is not the same as whether something is worth $1. Would you pay $1 for me to come and punch you in the face? The amount of effort involved for me to find out where you are, get there, and punch you in the face is a lot greater than $1. The $1 cost to you is not much. But I'd be quite surprised if you actually wanted to pay me $1 to punch you in the face.

The question of worth is whether that $1 could improve your life more if spent on something else. Will your life be better

When there's some kind of internet-based back end to your app (be that for high scores or whatever), then pirated copies are a loss. Hell, I've heard of not reading TFA, but not even reading the summary? Jesus.

The question should be, then, whether the availability and ease of piracy takes customers, who would otherwise buy the game, away.

I agree, and I think the answer is no.

I used to pirate stuff really heavily in college. Now that I can afford things, I buy them (when it is possible to buy anything).

Out of all of the people pirating applications and games, on any platform, 90% of them have been the same. When people are pirating they are usually in packrat mode, simply gathering stuff just to have it. But it

The code to tell if your application has been pirated or not is trivial, because pirating is basically just taking away the code signing which is easy to examine from the application. So it's very easy to get a clear picture of an app running because it has been pirated vs. is simply running on another device that iTunes has enabled.